The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 2, 1898, Page 18

15 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL SUNDAY, OCTOBER. 2, 189S. “SCHOONER &\ December, 1855, a vessel was ced during one of the severe storms .which are commen along tha - coast. The little ship broke from her.moorings and drifted into ah immense cave which leads from the fendocino in an easterly di- and énds—no man knoweth any rate no vestige of the craft was -ever seen or heard of from that day to this. Only three lives were N. wre @ost;-but. the story as told by an eye- witne s. most intensely interesting. The. only person living who se able to give anything: like definite evidence 15 John D a man of 80 years, still ‘g ent of the little town. Ac- cording to his estimate—and he is one the ‘few who were bold enough to hing in the way of an investi- s to the limit of this mysterious aof try an ation ve s on a line directly under the course of the great earthquake and he firmly believes that the cause of all this disturbance is a smoldering volcano ving to escape from rt vacation. is a fact that the vessel manner described below no man returned to tell the that the greate: line correspc which the cave > from’ its t seem almost strange k with fiction. y- glves the following ‘ription of the wreck! was on the 15th of Decem- mber of-us, all old salts, anding on the point that forms th ‘head of Mendocino's little T} W 1y vy, but any t acquaintance ast ‘would have realized weather was near at hand. was an-ominous dull, leaden on -the ‘horizon and _the long, round swell was warning suf- t-to keep .¢ A T T ou don't see npiany of them nowadays—was mak- SRR : N e 5 ALLOVED &' N ing straigh® for the bay. It was & sight that would ‘charm the eye of any old sailor man, but we had no idea that her master intended to make the port and presumed he was only on a long reach, with the intention of standing off shore again on the next tack. “We were soon undeceived on this point, for the captain put up his helm and sailed slap into the harbor. We stood aghast at his effrontery and re- alized in a moment that he must be a stranger to the rockbound coast of Mendocino or he would never haveé ta- ken such fearful chances. We soon found that she was the schooner Har- riet, Captain Harris, a good old-fash- ijoned New England skipper, who had been taught in his uth to obey or- ders and break owners and his orde: were to carry a cargo of lumber for the Mendocino Lumber Company to the port of San Francisco, which he fully ed to accomplish. The skipper, he had moored his in his own boat and ship, ashore re- came ported for orders to Mr. J. B. Ford, at The Captain Stood Bravely at the Whimper. X that time superintendent for the lumber company. Mr. Ford's advice to Har- ris was to get up his anchor with all possible speed and put to sea without delay. ¢ ‘‘Oh, I don’t know,” tain’s confident reply. weather this all right.’ ‘“‘But, my dear man,’ said Mr. Ford, ‘you have no idea of what is in store for you. We are on the eve of one of the heavy winter stokms and the vessel was never yet built that can live through a genuine sou’easter in this port, especially with the insecure moor- ing facilities which are the very best we have to offer. You ‘git.” Don’t stand an the ceremony of going, but go just as quick as the Lord will let you.’ “Captain Harris seemed to realize now that the matter was somewhat se- rious and pulled off to his ship at once ke preparations for sea. During the interval the wind had risen and things were becoming lively; the schooner was tugging vigorously at her Helm With His Little Son, a Boy was the cap- ‘I think I can Only Twelve Years Old, and Like Casabianco in the Poem, That Little Chap Refused to Desert His Father's Ship, There Like a Hero and Went to His Mysterious Death Without a but Stood OCING CAUE AND NO TRACE EVER FOUND OF I Singufar Occurrences in the County Where There Have © Lately Been So Many Earthquakes. hawser and the mate had placed chaf- ing gear along the rail and through the hawse pipe in order to save the lines from cutting if possible. In the mean- time the sea was becoming more ugly every minute; the wind assumed the proportion of a real live gale; every- thing was snapping and cracking aboard the brave little craft, and from where we stood ashore, with the wind in our favor, we could plainly hedr the voice of the mate, as he ripped and swore about his orders not being exe- cuted rapidly enough. “With corsiderable difficulty Captain Harris at last reached. his ship. He was as cool as a cucumber, but with the aid of our glasses we- could see that his face was ashen, and his mouth firmly set with the determination of a, man who meets danger and death when duty calls without flinching. “The moorimgs of the little bay are very good as far as they go. There is a heavy wrought cable, one of the largest ever made in England—it is still in use—and is firmly ring-bolted to the rocks on either side of the harbor, but its weakness lies in the leg-chains, to which the buo s are made fast. They are of ordinary anchor chain, and un- der a heavy tug are very apt to give way. “Well, as we stood breathlessly wait- ing and watching to see what might happen next a huge comber came surg- ing over the south reef and struck the Harriet full astern. Snap went the leg-chain, to which her bow line was fastened, and she spun around like a teetotum. Now things were lively and every able bodied man ashore grabbed for a life line and made for the oppo- site side of the bay to-lend a hand at rescue to the braye men who had bat- tled so tenaciously to preserve their ship. “We all realized that nothing could possibly -save the vessel, and devoted our entire energies to the human be- ings, whose lives were hanging by a thread, as it were. Each moment in- creased the peril of those poor fellows —and I tell you it was a trying thing to stand helplessly by and feel that you were powerless to do anything to save the poor souls almost within stone’s throw from the shore. The next big wave parted the leg-chain to which the stern line was fast, and this < left the poor ship at the mercy of the cruel sea. “She soon began to drift toward the south shore in the direction of the great cave, which 1s known by the not very euphoneous title of ~the ‘blow hole.” Many a helpless craft has drift- ed about the bay before, and many have done so since, but this is the first and last instance where anything afloat took.this course. In fact, it seems very strange that such a thing could happen, for you must know that the wind and waves during the winter storms all come from the southeast, and there seems no good reason why everything should not drift toward the north, but for some cause which no man can explain this vessel took a southerly course and made direct for the fatal ‘blowhole.” “We hurried to the bluff over the cave and arrived just in time to witness the first crash of the foremast against the ceiling of the cavern. It sounded like the report of a cannon, and the re- bound carried the Harriet back fifty fathoms into the open bay. The mast was broken off just below the cross- piece. . The topmast and a splintered portion of the mast itself were left dangling in the shrouds. ' After a few moments spent in breathless anxiety by us of the rescuing party, another smashing big swell struck the vessel astern and once more she was driven back into the yawning mouth of the hungry cavern. “With our life lines hanging over. the bluff we waited patiently for some sig- nal from below to hoist away. The spray was flying so thick we could only get an occasional sight of the ship. Soon there was a heavy tug at one of the lines and a hail from the deck of the ill-fated ship told us to hoist away, which we did with a will. The head of the mate soon appeared above thebank with a rope fast just beneath his arm- pits. We landed him on the bank with- out comment and renewed our atten- tion to those below. “In a similar manner we rescued all but three of the ship’s company. The three that were lost were the captain, his little son and the cook—whatever became of that cook we were never able to ascertain. “The captain stood bravely at the helm with hi_ little son, a boy only twelve years old, and like Casabilanca in the poem, that little chap refused to desert his father’s ship, but stood there like a hero and went to his mys- terfous death without a whimper. “As the wind blew the spray in an- other direction, making it possible for us to see the deck below, we called in vain to Captain Harris to make him- self and his little boy fast to one of the lines that we might drag him up as we o toward Ukiah. small towns along the coast. closed for days. is very noticeable. a large lake ha: England. quake,” age is m occurred 00000000000 OODOOO000OOOOOODO00O000O00O0O0OOOO0O00O0O0 did his companions,- but he refused point blank to leave his ship as long as she held together. “The last we saw of that-brave man he stood with one hand on a spoke of the wheel and with his other arm fond- ly embracing his son’s waist, dlsa,[:- peared forever from. .our view. We waited all night with the hope that on the turn of the tide the vesseél might possibly drift into the bay, but we never saw so much as a bit of her planking again. She had gone into the blow hole and her destination will ever remain a mystery. “The following summer a few of us mustered up courage and took a surf- boat with two coils of stout clothes line fast astern to see if we could find OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODOCOOOOOOOO ROM April 1'almost up to the present time earth- quake shocks have been almost daily occurrences all along the coast of Mendocino County, but more par- ticularly severe in the immediate vicinity of Mendo- cino City and on a line running east from that town Through the months of April, May and June from one to ten shocks were felt daily, some of them very severe. Trees were hurled to the ground, scarcely a brick chimney was left standing in the many places became so much alarmed that many of them carried their children into the open streets, where they remain:d about camp fires, Wrapped in blankets, for nights, awaiting the final crack of doom. The road which leads from Men- docino to Ukiah was impassable for weeks at a time, mak- ing the carrying and delivery of mails even when the pony express was resorted to. opened and the huge fissures in some instances were Great redwood trees, six and eight f in diameter, filled the canyons to such an travel was practically suspended. Miss Olive Fry of Ukiah says the death rate would have peen much greater than at Charleston during earthquake there had the country been more densely popu- lated. Crockery and glassware were destroyed in most of the houses from one end of the country to the other. ‘Along the course of the Navarro River the disturbance At one point the whole side of a moun- tain slid into the gulch below little watercourse was dammed up to such an extent that s been formed, which from all appearance is to remain a permanent fixture. eral springs have made their appearance, some hot, some cold, with sulphur and iron predominating. Shock was preceded by deafening reports like heavy ar- tillery or thunder during one of the summer storms in New fcularly positive course selected by the earth- 2 ll'j:r::flng from Mendocino to Ukiah, where the dam- ost marked, recalls a remarkable incident which forty-three years ago and may be of interest to scientists and the laity as well. windows broken and The good people of these an impossibility, The grou t extent that the great like an Alpine avalanche. The In many places min- Each heavy OOOOOOOOO\-O0O000000000000000000000000000 ©0000000000000000000000000000000 any trace of the lost Harriet. But we were so poorly equipped with light we had nothing but ordinary lanterns —that we had scarcely reached the end of our line before the foul air extin- guished the lights and made breathing 8o laborious that we were obliged to put about and return to the open sea. “All that now remains of the wreck of the Harriet is a little headboard which was erected by a few admirers of the brave shipmaster who met his death. while in the discharge of his duty. It is marked: ‘In Memory of Captain -Harris and His Brave Little Son,” ‘and there it stands, its letterihg almost . obliterated by the storms of forty-three winters.” W. C. BUNNY, gmokéless Puowdera Made of 0Old Clothes. California Will Supply Over One- Quarter of the New Powder Used by the Government. N all probability our navy has fought its last war with black pow= der. ships with 1,000,000 pounds of smokeless The Navy Department opened bids to-day for supplying war- powder. The California Powder Works offered to supply the whole amount, the Government supplying the alcohol, for $800,000, and to begin delivery on October first at the rate of 4000 pounds per day. The Giant Powder Company of California offérs to supply one-quarter of the whole amount, the Gov- ernthent to supply alcohol, for- $237,500. — Dispatch NE million pounds of smokeless powder and if the manufacturers could obtain a sufficient number of old white shirts and other gar- ments they would prefer to make every ounce of the order from them! It has been found during the experi- ments of the past few months that old cotton goods, commonly called “linen,” make the most perfect quality of smokeless powder, and the powder companies are busily searching through ev-ry known channel to pro- cure the needed quantities of this kind of material. At the works at Pinole there are sacks of old cotton which has been torn into strips and cleansed fer the pur- pose of making the very latest kind of smokeless powder. Sacks by the hundred, sacks by the thousand, sacks by the tens of thousand—old shirts by the ton. These are gathered from -all quarters and stored at the works to be used daily in enormous quantities. The process of developing a sackful of old linen into a material that will blow up from Washington, @ warship is neither intricate nor com- paratively expensive and yet but sixty years have elapsed since the discov- ery: was made that rendered such a transition possible. It was in 1838 that Pelouse observed that when cotton fabric or paper was immersed in cold concentrated nitric acid for a short time, the free acid being subsequently removed by washing, these materials became ~ without important alter- ation of structure converted into substances possessed of high ex- plosive properties. A little later Knop introduced the more. ad- vantageous method of treating the cotton -wool with a mixture of mnitric and sulphuric acid, and from that date on various chemical experiments and discoveries have been made until it is now believed that the point has been reachéd where this dangerous material is of the highest explosive power possi- e. ‘While these researches were being conducted it was almost as important to learn how to handle for the pur- poses of .commmerce these dangerous substances as to develop their power. It is now claimed that both_these de- siderata _have been reached, and that the_ fiery guncotton and smoke- less powder can be handled as safely as a child's toy. Simplé as the process may seem a visit to-the laboratory of a powder ‘works is somewhat of a revelation. All the ‘acids used have to be of just a cer- tain strength, and at every stage of the game constant work has to be done to insure everything. being perfect; other- wise ‘the slightest carelesspess or in- discretion may - give = the ‘surrounding towns one of those severe shocks which unfortunately ‘aré -not uncommon. Tt is wi hout doud* very reassuring to be told by u-self-contained expert that everything . is ‘perfectly safe, that a child could handlc it,-and that there is no anger se 1%rg “as. people ‘pay -at- _ tention .to. what they are:doing, but— while all these assurances are being given my min could net help revert- ing to-the fact that about once a. year it is necessary ‘to. hold.an inquest over the remains of those who are never left in such condition’as. to ex~1ain how- it happened. Ay